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qqueenofhades · 9 months

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what would you say are the best parts of fanfiction as a type of a written work? (if, theoretically speaking, someone has been writing&worldbuilding an AU so far from the original thing that with a few minor tweaks they could make it into a pretty much original text - not to publish for money, Ao3 has an original work fandom, it could go there - it's, uh, what would you say are good reasons to keep it a fanfic? what are good reasons to not?)

The main thing about fanfiction is that it relies upon re-contextualizing, reworking, or otherwise drawing directly on the readers' knowledge of a pre-existing work, using that work's characters, plot, and universe. As such, when you're writing fanfiction, you don't need to spend tons of time introducing the personalities, conflicts, settings, etc; that is already built in, your readers are expecting you to pick it up and go, and part of the narrative conceit or overall plot can rest on how it's similar to, diverging from, or totally separate from the canon universe (as in the case of AUs). Because you're writing in response to another text, you're performing a dialogue with something else, and that's why most fanfiction needs some amount of reworking in order to contain its own story without reference to another intellectual property, because you're using pre-built parts instead of making your own.

However, as someone who also tends to write long, plotty AUs with extensive worldbuilding beyond and quite separate from canon (and various original characters), I know that it's fairly easy to just change a few names and plot details and have a basically original work. Which at that point it is! You've done the work to develop your own angle of the story, there is a ton of published stuff out there that is either thinly reworked fanfic or inspired by fanfic or based on another very similar premise, and there's no reason you shouldn't throw your own hat into the ring and see what happens. What you have to do if converting it into original fiction, aside from changing the names, is checking to see if it holds up as its own narrative without reference to another text. That might mean filling out character backstory/motivations, plot points, events, major conflicts, romantic relationships, or anything else that is taken as assumed in a fic and will need to be strengthened in order to make the story work as its own entity. If you're writing an AU where Blorbo A and Blorbo B fall in love in a space opera, you have the readers' implicit knowledge of those characters and their dynamics already, and the fun comes from transposing that to a new setting/universe. You can obviously use that to develop the original characters, but you also have to be aware of where you need to draw something out, or rework something, so that a reader not familiar with the source material (i.e. whatever you based your fic on) can get it.

You can also take the premise of a fic and rewrite/rework it as an original novel. I'm doing that right now with The Key of Solomon, which has one of my favorite plots in my own fics, but rather than just changing the names in the existing work, I'm reworking a lot, setting it in a different world, adding new characters and plotlines, building out more lore and history, etc., and it will not go the way fic-TKOS currently goes, because the core of this story is about something different/involves a different set of thematic conflicts and character arcs. (And yes, I am excited about it.) This is the sort of stuff that I discovered by just poking around with the premise, throwing some outline + worldbuilding notes in a Word doc, and starting to write and see what happened. In other words, there are a lot of ways you can rework or redo your existing work, which published authors do all the time, and if you're wondering how to restructure your story on its own terms and not as a derivative of another story, a comprehensive dismantle and rebuild might be a good idea in any case. Take your AU setting, your renamed characters, your tweaked plot, etc, and start writing it from scratch, as that will give you the best sense of how it holds together and where there are the most useful opportunities to change and expand. Because of how writing works, you will usually then understand more about what you want to do with it and what makes it compellingly different from where it started.

Likewise, if you DO want to make money off it/self-publish it on Amazon or wherever/look for a traditional-publishing agent and deal, that is completely fine. Because the "You Cannot Monetize Fanworks" thing is drilled into us so deeply, it can sometimes be viewed as a bad thing if you, as an artist, want to actually make money off your art and creative labor. It's not a bad thing! So don't feel like you have to disclaim any intention to publish it for money or think that it's only a "good" work if you don't do that. You can indeed put it on AO3 as an original work if all you want is for people to read it and enjoy it, which is the main pleasure from fic; you're an amateur writing in your spare time for other amateurs/fans to enjoy out of the love of sharing the story and characters. But if you do want to make it into something that you intend on selling for real-people money (as hey, I will explore in some fashion when the above project is finished), it doesn't make you A Dirty Capitalist or Less of an Artist or whatever the latest nonsensical Tumblr groupthink wants you to think. So while what you do with it is up to you, you can 100% pursue publication for money if you want to. (After all, aren't we all big fans of Pay Artists/Writers Appropriately For Their Work? Yeah.)

Anyway, what this all boils down to is whether you want to keep it as a fic just because you like it that way, and how much work you feel like doing in transforming it into an original story. I have plenty of fics where I have done enough AU/world-building/extra characters that it would be very easy to change the names and call it a day, but I haven't, because I wrote them as fics and I like them that way. But then, as noted above, I have also started developing an original project out of something that I first wrote as an AU fic, because I liked the idea and wanted to explore it with a different twist/set of characters/universe. So yeah, it's a matter of personal preference and what you then want to do with the finished result (i.e. just post it on AO3 or pursue publication and financial return from it), and either way, it's up to you. If you have a feeling that you want to develop it as an original story in whatever way, hence why you're asking me this question, then I say you should do that. You can always put it aside or try something else if the conversion isn't working, but if it does, hey! More things to explore! So do it and have fun.

#anonymous #ask #writing advice

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newhologram · 6 years

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Glorious purpose, sacrifice, and the god who started it all

Send a heartbeat to The void that cries through you Relive the pictures that have come to pass For now we stand alone The world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate With no more to hate

- The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning by Smashing Pumpkins (because this song is 100% about Avengers)

Been on an MCU binge to put everything under a microscope, so here’s what’s been rolling around in my brain.

Infinity War spoilers below with speculation/theories for Avengers 4 that includes A4 spoilery set leak stuff.

**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**

* * *

There’s a lot to talk about as far as theories as we were given some hopeful leads in IW and other films. Just to take inventory on some other speculations and fun ideas:

Shuri may have backed Vision up

Soul World: is that where Gamora is? Is that where everyone who was dusted went?

Nebula may get a meaningful role in helping to take Thanos down

Captain Marvel’s role in all this??

The possibility of Adam Warlock coming out of his cocoon

The Eternals maybe

Hawkeye/Ronin

Thor’s Stormbreaker handle being made of Groot somehow solving something

Thanos being overcome with grief in his isolation

The possibility of a major time jump in A4 to see how Earth has moved on after the snap, which may include Tony’s future with Pepper and their child. Everyone will have lived so many years with the consequences of the snap.

It also feels like each character might have to go on their own hunt for the stones, which might lead to an interesting reversal of the loss and sacrifice they faced in IW. I wonder who gets assigned to each stone and how that’ll play out for their individual character arc? There’s one stone for each original Avenger, so that’s cool to think about

Erasing versus dying. If you’ve heard anything about “the Event” that a lot of astrologers have been talking about lately, basically our reality is due for a cosmic event which splits us—leaving people behind and taking the rest into a prosperous new universe. Some will be “erased” from this existence. It’s been called the Rapture. Which is uh. Pretty interesting considering IW premiered on the actual date of the rapture prediction and how the Snap is absolutely a kind of sad superhero bad ending rapture.

Rewriting everything that we’ve seen in the past 6 years in canon

I’ve also seen some talk of theories such as “Loki is Bruce Banner in disguise”. I can see why this theory is popular because Bruce acts really weird the whole movie and seems to know things he shouldn’t. But I’m not too into it because it feels like there’s a big payoff coming with the Hulk (as in, we better get a cool shot of him bursting out of the Hulkbuster armor, like the toy).

There’s also some talk about spotting Quicksilver and even Wolverine on the set but I have nooo idea what those would even mean, not just in regards to the plot but with the whole joint custody thing Sony, Fox and Disney have been working out.

All of that said, I’ve been thinking about a few other threads in particular though, so that’s what I’ll be exploring here. Just speculation for fun. Let’s see where it leads.

☀ Undying Fidelity

The opening scene was really suspicious to me for many reasons. These directors are sharp and I believe there is purpose to everything we see as well as what we don’t see.

Let’s talk about my boy Loki.

He starts out pretty scared. The guy is sweating bullets.

After the Hulk engages Thanos, Loki isn’t on screen for several minutes. We don’t see him reacting or hiding or anything. I don’t trust that, especially not with the Russo bros directing it. I feel as though something is being hidden from us in this moment, distracted by the Hulk just as much as the bad guys are.

When he reappears to offer himself as a guide to Thanos, suddenly his demeanor is totally different. He seems calm, resolved even.

His choice of words is very important. The most suspicious to me are: “rightful heir to Jotunheim”, “God of Mischief”, “do hereby pledge my undying fidelity”. Loki does not want us to forget that he’s not only a Jotunn, not Asgardian by blood, but he’s a God, and a very, very cunning one. To be honest, it doesn’t feel like that last line was for Thanos at all. It honestly feels like he’s saying it to someone else—maybe himself. To his own duty in this moment. Which brings me to the next bullet point:

After that last line, dagger forming, his eyes quickly dart down. There’s a pause. A small beat there. He looks as though he’s steeling himself. That, to me, is the face of a man who very much knows he’s about to die. It’s a very Obi-Wan moment, right in front of Thor. It’s somehow even more heartbreaking if he knew it was coming, and was still so scared and small when Thanos wrapped his fist around his neck.

Loki’s a smart cookie. He may be relatively young for a god/alien but this isn’t his first rodeo. He already knows how deadly and terrifying Thanos is without the Gauntlet/stones, so what does he think he can do right now? He knows a little dagger isn’t going to win this for them and that’s precisely the point. He isn’t dumb enough to try that sincerely, which makes me believe even more that it was strategic. I have a feeling Thanos chiding him about his choice in words (”undying”) is going to come back to bite him in the ass.

Back to Loki’s words being important. When he’s first about to surrender the Tesseract earlier in the scene, he says to Thor, "I promise you, brother, the sun will shine on us again." He says it with so much purpose.

And his final words to Thanos: “You will never be a god.” Another reminder: Loki is a god. He’s survived a black hole, stabbing, Hulk-smashing, Grandmaster’s orgies, and likely more in his years. We’ve come to expect him to fake his own death by this point, though I’m still on the fence about whether this one was fake, or a necessary one he knew needed to happen, or somehow a bit of both. I wonder, only a little, where did Loki’s body go, is it just floating around with the rest of the dead?

For that matter, where the hell is Valkyrie? Is there any meaningful payoff rather than just humor for Korg calling Loki a ghost in Ragnarok? I’m not too hopeful for something like that, but it’s a thought.

Later on in the film we see Thor, another god, (barely) survive the concentrated full force of a dying star. I’m supposed to believe Loki, an incredibly gifted frost giant child trained in the arts of magic, Loki Ha Ha Duplicates of Me Everywhere Odinson, Loki I’m Right Where I Need to Be Laufeyson just has a sudden brain fart, tries to stab the Mad Titan, gets his neck snapped in front of his brother, and it’s not on purpose?

BITCH. DID. NOT. TURN. BACK. TO. BLUE.

Do I really think Loki is still alive? I don’t know. Loki is very, very dear to me but like I said, I’m on the fence. Because it seems like the deaths that happened before the snap, save for Gamora, might be permanent because we needed to feel that the stakes were high. On the other hand, again, Loki is very gifted. We’ve seen him “die” before and I still have a very hard time believing he’s fully dead and not god-level deep coma smacked down needing time to regenerate if he doesn’t just turn blue right after since his iconic look is an illusion too. His line about the sun shining on them again uses the word “us”, which could indicate a revival and reunion somehow.

But I’m cry because you know he and Thor got into a lot of trouble growing up, and big brother was always there for him. But then little brother goes through some hard stuff, falls into a black hole, gets picked up by a cult, and it all comes down to this moment now: no home to return safely to, no mother to console him after Odin’s discipline, Thor unable to save him.

♥ We Don’t Trade Lives

Before I go into A4 speculation, let’s look at how each character deals with sacrifice, just for fun:

Loki is given a choice: his brother’s life, or the Space Stone → Loki surrenders and sacrifices himself

Quill is given a choice: the love of his life, or Thanos getting closer to winning → Quill is hesitates and is unable to keep his promise of sacrificing Gamora

Gamora is given a choice: her sister, or the location of the Soul Stone → Gamora surrenders to spare Nebula

Thanos is given a choice: his favorite daughter, or the Soul Stone → Thanos sacrifices Gamora for the stone

Dr. Strange is given a choice: Tony Stark, or the Time Stone → Despite earlier warning Tony he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice either him or Peter if it means keeping the Time Stone safe, he surrenders the stone → He sacrifices his duty, his life, and the lives of everyone else who gets dusted in order to put them on the one right path he saw out of over 14 million

Wanda is given a choice: Vision, or the Mind Stone → Her struggle with this choice starts earlier on when Vision offers to sacrifice himself to destroy the Mind Stone → Cap tells him “we don’t trade lives” → Wanda is also not willing to immediately kill him when asked → They run out of time and options, Wanda finally sacrifices Vision, which as we saw didn’t really work out the way they wanted

Our characters struggle with sacrificing something important to them in order to save the universe (remember, in the eyes of Thanos, he’s saving the universe too). Many of the characters value their loved ones above everything else and don’t want to have to make that choice. They don’t want to face the pain of a life without that person, or they don’t want another person to suffer or die painfully because of them.

Alright. Let’s talk bidness.

♛ Reframe the Future

Yeah—remember B.A.R.F.? Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing.

This has to be what Tony will use to look back at things. I see him replaying the events of the first Avengers over and over, trying to figure out how it all could’ve gone so wrong, what clues they missed, and how to fix it.

Which brings us to the question of time travel. Is this where the idea of Infinite Avengers will come in, if the multiverse is explored? I don’t have too much of a lead on that, but it’s interesting to think about. If that ends up being the title of A4 it would certainly point to that.

(Note Tony’s greying hair which supports the idea that A4 will start 5-10 years after Infinity War)

Many have speculated about the devices on their wrists in these photos, as well as the fact that while Tony and Ant-Man seem to be their present selves, others are in their old costumes from the first Avengers. Doesn’t quite answer why Cap is wearing a device, unless they recruit lots of multiversal Avengers from various timelines/realities/points in history to help? (Wouldn’t it be crazy to find out that Ant-Man has been a secret tiny time traveling Avenger the whole time?)

It’s hard to know exactly what kind of time travel shenanigans we’re dealing with. Maybe we’ll learn more when we see Ant-Man and the Wasp, since they’re going to be dealing with the quantum realm, where time doesn’t really exist. In the quantum realm, every possibility exists at the same time.

We do have some clues though.

Exhibit A: Loki in all his muzzled glory, as seen at the end of Avengers.

We know that this time travel plot would involve going back to where it all started. But what could be done, what is Tony’s play?

Exhibit B: Tony Stark in S.H.I.E.L.D. gear. More specifically—

As one of Loki’s escorts.

What we don’t see in Avengers is how everything goes down when they take Loki back into custody (after grubbing on shawarma). We don’t see the discussion about what to do with him and Thor’s decision to take Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard.

So, again, what the hell is Tony’s game plan?

If he’s disguised as a guard, there could be a chance to get alone with Loki and talk to him. Tell him everything that goes down. Get him to help. Get info from him, and make sure he knows how things need to play out in order for this all to work.

I’m not sure how yet though. It seems this could somehow involve Stark making his own Infinity Gauntlet, but that’s later down the line. Where does Loki fit into the plan beyond the time travel scene? That may be all we get of him.

I’m so excited for the possibility of my two favorite characters working together or even having just once more scene together, however it plays out. Tony and Loki both smiled at each others’ jokes in A1 and I loved it. I feel like their dynamic would be so interesting to explore more. Tony totally clocked that Loki is a diva, because they’re both like that lol.

☮ Glorious Purpose

But what’s most interesting to me right now is the implication that if this is the closed loop kind of time travel, it would mean Loki has known about all this since the end of Avengers.

When the Hulk was distracting everyone, was Loki hiding behind a wall, readying himself for what he knew he needed to do next? I’ve heard talk of the possibility of a duplicate since that’s what Loki does, but would Thanos have been able to tell he was killing an illusion? He didn’t have the Soul Stone then which likely helped him tell which Strange was real later. I’ve also heard talk of a Loki switchout, but I’m not too convinced because it would involve somehow transporting another Loki there. Not so sure there would be a stealthy way to do any of that.

Did Loki die in the beginning of Infinity War fully knowing all those years that it was going to happen, that it needed to happen, in order for the sun to shine again?

Did Loki die to help save the universe?

...

If Loki knew those few weeks on Sakaar were going to be his last, do you think he was like, “Guess I better live my best life and spend my final days sipping cocktails on Grandmaster’s lap.”

My final speculation prediction REQUIREMENT from Marvel Studios is to have Avengers 4 end with a beautiful Pepperony wedding filled with superheroes. Whoever’s left, that is.

(This also means if there’s a time jump, Tony will possibly erase the present he has with Pepper and their child in order to save everyone... Should be interesting.)

In conclusion, have this whiteboard drawing I did for @spazzeon as I tried to explain all of this

#avengers #mcu #infinity war #marvel #loki #infinity war spoilers #teku #long post

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